Manali Missives 1/2014
A long pondered Issue On Love in India:
A Reflection on Love, Sex and Marriage after 30 Years’ Matrimony
A long pondered Issue On Love in India:
A Reflection on Love, Sex and Marriage after 30 Years’ Matrimony
Every day dozens of newly wed couples promenade in India’s honeymoon central, the Manali Mall, photographing each other and frequenting its coffee shops. Brought together by parents and relatives in arranged marriages many of these couples scarcely know each other, so the arduous, even dangerous trips by Volvo bus to and from Manali and the time spent as tourists in the town and surrounds function as particularly important “quality time”. Central Manali is full of young marrieds getting to know each other as well as their surroundings. Some brides retain traces of their wedding finery - intricate patterns in henna on their hands and forearms, gold bangles and jewellery. Indian wives hold 11% of the world's gold, more than the reserves of USA, IMF, Switzerland and Germany put together. This is never more obvious than at weddings which frequently cost more than their relatively austere western counterparts. Love, sex and marriage seem even more important in this predominantly Hindu society than in the rest of the world. To borrow a Christian term Hindus regard marriage as a sacrament. Countrywide divorce statistics are not available, but one can safely say that although the rate of divorce in the cities is rising in step with the growing wealth and independence of women it is still generally much lower than in the West. Brides in Manali seem as happy to be married as brides anywhere, and one presumes that many of these couples will go on to successful marriages. And despite the preponderence of arranged marriages the huge film industry shows that the culture is intensely romantic. But there is an underside to this picture. In this still male-dominated society many women feel relatively powerless in loveless, conflicted relationships. With the weight of public and often family opinion against leaving a marriage, inadequate means of support if they they do leave, and often the implied, if not actual, threat of retributive violence women can be like birds in gilded cages. Worse yet, I have heard stories of brides suffering internal injuries. Obliquely put, the world-wide pornography industry, turbocharged by the internet, has not been a friend of women, in any country…
I met the second love of my life nearly 32 years ago not in Manali but in south India, and married her 20 months later in Sweden. Although my Lena's parents were Swedish, in the sense that she was born and mostly raised in India she's a native of this country. I’m an Australian native for whom India has become another of my life's loves. People often find our story romantic. We admit that it's unusual, and are proud of it because it's ours, so it’s hardly surprising that we recently spent a week in Delhi celebrating 30 years of marriage. Being westerners, the story of our relationship differs markedly from that of most Indians, yet our attitude to marriage also differs from those of many fellow westerners. What, for example, is this about Lena being the "second" love of my life? To say that I met the first love of my life, the Lord God, over 43 years ago risks taking the romantic wind from the sails of this other story, relativizing my love for the woman who, in the normally understood sense, has been the love of my life for more than 30 years. In a culture that tends both to absolutise and, strangely, trivialise romantic love that notion sits strangely. Yet Lena is content with it. Indeed, she says the same of me: I am the second love of her life, after the Lord God. We are both convinced that this primary love, from and for the Lord God who created each of us, sets the secondary love we bear from and toward each other in its proper context, and enables it to function properly.
There's a wild, obsessive quality to sexual desire and love that isn't satisfied with second place. All societies, cultures and perhaps all individuals know this. The author of the bible's Song of Songs did:
"Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave." Song of Solomon 8:6
But it’s one thing to describe sexual love and quite another to control and channel it. It colonizes our thought patterns and routines, leading us into paths we had never expected and can find deeply disturbing. Swedish artist Eva Dahlgren has written and performed a beautiful, haunting song called "When a wild red rose blooms it's scent permeates the whole forest". Even if you don't understand Swedish you can intuit from the music that this is a love song, or at least a song about love. But what's the wild red rose about? Some years ago Dahlgren entered a "registered partnership" with her lesbian lover. I presume that in this song she is arguing that this "wild red rose", her lesbian love relationship, makes the whole forest of human society smell better. Judging by the many congratulations Lena and I, and other heterosexual, married couples have received upon achieving milestones in our relationships it seems that people feel that our cultivated red rose makes society smell better. In this song Dahlgren argues for legitimacy for what so often and so strongly has been felt to be deeply illegitimate, at least in the society of which Dahlgren is a part.
In so doing she has contributed to a huge argument within and beyond western society about what is sexually normal and acceptable. There’s a strong tradition within the Christian Church, which has set the tone in describing and explaining right behaviour within western society and Christian communities everywhere, that is summarized by the phrases "faithfulness within marriage, chastity outside of it”, and "marriage is the lifelong union of a man and a woman". These stances derive, summary-wise, from the seventh of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:14 “You shall not commit adultery.”); injunctions, particularly in several New Testament letters, against fornication; and the moral of the second creation story (Genesis 2:24 "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.") quoted by Jesus against the idea of divorce (Matthew 19:4-6, inter alia). Statistics indicate, however, that this view is observed relatively seldom. That begs the question of whether it is realistic. Furthermore, the authority of this "traditional" Christian teaching is itself under attack from both within and without, a consequence of post-modern suspicion of authority. And, of course, there are the attitudes of other cultures and religions to sexual love to consider. Which leads me back to India.
When westerners think of sexual love in India we often point to the Kama Sutra and the highly erotic and graphic temple carvings at Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh. The Kama Sutra is an ancient Indian Hindu text widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behaviour in Sanskrit literature. Only a portion of the work consists of practical advice on sexual intercourse, but this, inevitably, is what has captured the imagination of the West. It addresses "Kama", meaning sensual, aesthetic or sexual pleasure, which is one of life's four goals according to Hindus. The other three are Dharma (Virtuous living), Artha (Material prosperity) and Moksha (Liberation from earthly existence). India, the land of contrasts and contradictions! Although, as I mentioned, most Indian marriages are still arranged, romantic love and sexuality have long been the subject of fascinated enquiry. They are looked upon as an essential part of the study of aesthetics: srngararasa - the erotic rasa or flavour - being one of the nine rasas or comprising the Hindu aesthetic system. It's a testimony to Hinduism's ability to absorb and transform its conquerors that both Hindu and Muslim courts commissioned and had painted numerous miniatures that show how to maximize sexual pleasure. Though this was anathema to the strictest interpretations of Middle Eastern Islam both then and now, it flourished in Mughal India, particularly in the south Indian Mughal kingdom of Hyderabad, far from the stern eye of Muslim orthodoxy.
In White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India William Dalrymple has retold a tragic, true story that brings together many of the elements I’ve been discussing. I shall review it. In 1798 Khair un-Nissa, the beautiful, fourteen year old daughter of Persian, Muslim nobles who had fairly recently migrated to Hyderabad, was betrothed to an old man. She strenuously opposed this marriage, which brought her into conflict with her grandfather who had arranged it, largely for the advancement of the family in Hyderabadi society. Instead, she fell (conveniently?) in love with James Achille Kirkpatrick, the 34 year old British Resident (representative of the British East India Company) in Hyderabad. She seduced him, (something he admitted was not difficult to achieve!) and they embarked on a passionate love affair that scandalised both Hyderabad's Moghul, Muslim society and the Company's leadership which at that time was growing increasingly “Victorian", morally strait-laced, racist and unwilling to approve of let alone adopt any aspect of the cultures they ruled. Rudyard Kipling faithfully represented later Victorian Great Britain with his famous quote: “East is east and West is west, and never the twain shall meet.”
Nevertheless, Khair un-Nissa had the support of her mother and grandmother, and the zenana, (literally the part of a house belonging to a South Asian Hindu or Muslim family which was reserved for the women of the household, but often meaning the women themselves, who could wield much power). They gave Kirkpatrick access to Khair, then outmanoeuvred Khair's grandfather, so that when she fell pregnant she was able to marry Kirkpatrick (in a Muslim ceremony after he had been circumsized to conform with Muslim practice) before the child was born. Kirkpatrick belonged to an earlier generation of “India hands” who adopted and celebrated many aspects of Indian culture, not least by forming of relationships with Indian women. Having got rid of his south Indian mistress in favour of Khair, Kirkpatrick was then, to his credit, faithful to the latter through 4 separate Company investigations into his behaviour, and was acquitted on each occasion of the charge of having "debauched" Khair. The marriage held.
Kirkpatrick excelled as Company Resident, largely because he did adopt Indian/Moghul dress, customs and even the Shia Islamic faith, and was, naturally, highly thought of by his hosts. He designed and had built a wonderful residence for himself, his young but accomplished wife and their two children. The family enjoyed a short period of wealth and happiness. In another, different time that might have been the end of the story. But Kirkpatrick, realising that Britain was moving towards adopting more racist, white supremacist attitudes, reasoned that the best chance his Anglo-Indian children had of securing acceptance and prosperity was if they were educated in Britain. So to Britain they were sent, aged 3 and 18 months, via a 6 month voyage, breaking their mother's heart. Kirkpatrick rushed from Hyderabad to Madras to see them one last time before their ship left, then journeyed on to the Company headquarters in Calcutta. Tragically, not only was he too late to see them but his bad health worsened en route and he died aged 41, far from home, children and the love of his life, leaving Khair a 19 year old widow bereft of her children.
This story grew still more tragic. A year later Khair and her mother took the enormous journey (by elephant!) to Calcutta to grieve at her husband's grave. While she was away the old king (Nizam) of Hyderabad and his chief minister both died. Their successors were not nearly as sympathetic to Khair and her family. The minister, embittered by what he felt was her family’s previous opposition, refused to allow her back to Hyderabad. Now homeless as well as without husband and children, the desperate Khair formed a brief relationship with one of Kirkpatrick’s former subordinates, who installed her, her mother and their retinue in a stinking coastal backwater north of Madras and nicknamed “Fish Town”, then promptly neglected her when it suited him. Khair died, perhaps literally of a broken heart, aged 27.
This was a real life love tragedy in the class of Romeo and Juliet, a English/Persian saga played out in India. Of course India has its own indigenous versions of the great Shakespearean tragedy. Punjabi culture, for example, (part of the Punjab lies within the Diocese of Amritsar in which we are serving) has at least 4 of them. Mirza Sahiba, named for its hero and heroine respectively, is currently the best known, the plot having been made contemporaneous in the 2012 “Pollywood" (Punjabi Bollywood) movie Mirza - The Untold Story. These tales mirror tragic real life situations that feature regularly in India’s regional and national media.
So what is one, from the perspective of 30 years’ marriage, to make of sexual passion and its often tragic results? Is sexual love like a virus that drives humans mad, causing dissension and destruction? Is it to be eradicated, controlled, expressed, given free rein or some combination of the above? Was Khair un-Nissa a Perso-Hyderabadi Laila who lured the all-too-willing Kirkpatrick into a liaison that advantaged her? Clearly not, I think. She was an unusually young, able and passionate woman who wanted the things women typically desire of life: to be loved, to love in return and to form a family. She had a “red hot go” at achieving these things, and were it not for pig-headed, power-hungry males of both cultures and, primarily, her husband’s death, she may have succeeded. My sadness for her is that she was so alone in her quest. I presume she was a devout Muslim, but Dalrymple gives no indication that she prayed even to Allah for help in her difficult situation. This is no criticism of her. Her instincts were no doubt good and the odds she faced where overwhelming, but as she found out to her terrible cost no man can ultimately protect and fulfil a woman. My experience is that the God who is faithfully represented by Jesus Christ, wants very much to protect, support and nourish all humans, and indeed the whole creation. Marriage is one of the main means God has provided for this, and it is designed to include God in a kind of stable three-legged stool.
I’ve already indicated that Kirkpatrick was neither a child molester nor a Don Juan, and I find much to admire in his inclusive, non-racist approach to his life in India. By the way, this story provides a warning not to too easily force actions, events and characters to conform to our particular cultural expectations. Firstly, we need to be very careful about criticising and rejecting other cultures as the Victorian British did. That way terrible arrogance lies; I suspect the British Raj sowed the seeds of its eventual demise by behaving like this. Secondly, in all the current, justified outrage over sexual abuse of minors we need to remember that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was probably a minor in our terms. Girls in many cultures where the life expectancy is much shorter than that of westerners are generally married off soon after puberty. However, my question that Kirkpatrick’s behaviour begs is, even if the possibility that this might happen was understood and accepted by her, how he could cast off his south Indian concubine in favour of someone younger, richer, prettier, and fairer? That is a nightmare many women fear. Sexual desire and love are very powerful motivators but they do not justify abandoning normal good behaviour towards others. The greatest of the 4 terms for love the word-rich Greek language used, at least in the New Testament, was not eros, but agape, the selfless love that seeks the best for love’s object. By God’s grace humans are not at the mercy of our passions and lusts.
While working on this blog in Café Manali the other day I was interrupted by a young couple arguing. The girl even started swearing in English, perhaps to embarrass her man in front of me. Whether this was a lovers’ spat or an expression of dismay at being forced together by their respective communities I’ll never know. If they had chosen to engage me in their conversation I might have had a deal to say. For me, after 30 years my marriage with Lena means many things. Chief among them, it is a hint of eternal life to come, and a sanctification and preparation for it. How do that relate to passionate sexual desire and love, one might ask? Well, whoever thought that the God who created sex and love is not also passionate?!
We pray for God’s blessings upon you in 2014, and as you work through this cluster of issues yourself!
David Reichardt
